[PEN-L:160] Re: Connerly and Ethnic/Women studies

[Doug Henwood <dhenwood@xxxxxxxxx>]

michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

>Maybe Rakesh knows more about this.  My only information was a story in
>the Sacramento Bee in which Connerly made his intentions known.  Nothing
>has happened yet, but I am sure that it will be a popular cause with the
>Yahoos.

I'm reading Alan Wolfe's awful book, One Nation After All, which purports
to be a study of what the suburban middle class thinks. (His sample
consists of 200 people in 12 suburbs. That small sample is one of the many
things wrong with it; the main problem, though, is his brain-dead centrism
which reduces all political choices to "moral" ones, which turns all
conflict into spurious consensus, and which completely effaces class from
the picture.) One cheering thing in it, though (if you can trust him, which
is a big if), is that the yahoos aren't quite as yahooish as you fear.
They're not opposed to multicultural education (he made a point of trying
to elicit hostility, to conform with his own prejudices), and they seem
much more accepting of feminism (not the word, of course, the idea) than
you'd think.

He also cites some more rigorous polling data. The "Post-Modernity Project"
asked people to rate their feelings about certain words and images. Some
negative feelings scores:

militias                         28% [the highest negative rating of all]
National Rifle Association       21
political correctness            12
affirmative action               10
feminist                         10
therapy                           3

Could be worse, no?

Doug